David Putnam and Ed Stetzer, Breaking the Discipleship Code: Becoming a Missional Follower of Jesus. Broadman and Holman, 2008.
Companion volume: Stetzer and Putnam, Breaking the Missional Code
Referenced in: Missional Lifestyle, Discipleship, Spirituality
LifeandLeaderhsip.com Summary
This is a follow-up to the popular text by Stetzer and Putnam, Breaking the Missional Code. The first book addressed how a church could be engaged in God’s mission by being biblically faithful and engaging people in culture. This text goes a step further by focusing on what it means for each individual to be a missional follower of Jesus.
Most missional literature rightly addresses the fact that missional is not a “build it and they will come” approach to established church growth. Instead, it is much more incarnational, believing Christians should “take up dwelling” in and among the world to make a transformational kingdom impact. The quest is to walk and live missionally. But how? This text addresses that question at length. It is “about bursting our religious bubbles and engaging the world,” to “become a missional follower of Jesus.” (5)
The book is divided into three parts.
Part One – What is a missional follower of Jesus? This looks beyond years of piling on traditions and unrealistic expectations through a fresh examination of the lives of Jesus and his disciples.
Part Two – How does a person become a missional follower of Jesus? This goes beyond the guilt-driven altar calls and forceful explanations of the four spiritual laws to understanding the process of spiritual searching, believing in Christ, belonging to a spiritual community, becoming more like Christ, and becoming a friend of sinners.
Part Three – What does a missional follower of Jesus look like in different contexts? This section challenges us to leave our comfort zone and go missional into the various arenas of life. These include pictures of missional living in the church, politics, green space, battlefield, city, suffering, classroom, home, and religious world.
This is one of my strongest recommendations in missional living and spirituality.
From the Publisher
Ed Stetzer and David Putman’s popular church leadership book Breaking the Missional Code is helping pastors and ministry staff to guide their collective congregations toward becoming missionaries in their communities. But the need remains for this concept to be further defined at an individual level.
Breaking the Discipleship Code, written this time by Putman with a foreword from Stetzer, opens the door to a greater understanding of what it means to personally be a missional follower of Jesus in relation to every aspect of our changing world. Balancing cultural relevance with biblical faithfulness, the book invites ordinary believers, whether on Wall Street or in a Waffle House, next door or across the ocean, to begin having an extraordinary spiritual impact in their unique context.
About the Author
David Putman serves as one of the pastors at Mountain Lake Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where he focuses on issues related to growing the church’s impact in its community and around the world. Having coached hundreds of church planters across America since the 1980’s, he is also recognized as one of the catalysts of the current church planting movement. David and his wife Tami have two children.
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